, '''''"FOX5 DC"''''' is an owned and operated
TV Station of the
Fox Broadcasting Company . It is located in
Washington, D.C. and serves
Northern Virginia ,
Maryland , the
Martinsburg, West Virginia area and
Washington, D.C. from a studio and transmitter located in the
Tenleytown section of
Washington, D.C. . WTTG's sister station is
UPN affiliate
WDCA channel 20, forming a duopoly owned by
Fox Television Stations Group .
The station traces its history to
May 19 ,
1945 , when
Allen B. DuMont founded , an experimental station. On
January 3 ,
1947 , it received the first commercial television license in the nation's capital as '''WTTG''' named for
Thomas T. Goldsmith , the station's first chief engineer and DuMont's best friend. The station became part of the
DuMont Television Network . WTTG had considerable local success, unlike DuMont.
In
1956 , after DuMont ended network operations, the station was sold to
Metromedia . By the
1970s , WTTG was one of the leading independent stations in the country, running a broad lineup of cartoons, off-network sitcoms, first-run syndicated shows, old movies, local news and locally produced programs. Its main claim to fame was ''Panorama'', an afternoon talk show hosted by John Willis, and
Maury Povich . Even after WDCA signed on in the late
1960s , WTTG continued to be the leading independent station.
When
Cable Television began in the
1970s , WTTG became a regional
Superstation . Cable companies distributed WTTG as far south as
North Carolina , as far east as
Delaware and throughout
Maryland and
Virginia . Though not distributed as widely as it once was the popularity of WTTG has kept it available on cable on several Maryland and Virginia cable systems and to this day serves as the default Fox affiliate for the
Harrisonburg, Virginia (where a low-power translator is present) and
Salisbury, Maryland TV markets.
Metromedia owned the station until
1986 when
Rupert Murdoch , after buying
20th Century Fox , purchased the Metromedia television stations to form a basis for the Fox network by
1987 . WTTG has since become a Fox owned-and-operated station (O&O), but has retained consistently high ratings, a rarity for a Fox affiliate. Initially, its programming was similar to what it had run as a true independent station. Then, in the summer of
1990 , the morning cartoon block was ended in favor of Fox 5 Morning News. It is the second Fox O&O to have a morning newscast and the fourth or fifth Fox affiliate with morning news.
In the
1990s , Fox 5 added more syndicated talk shows and reality shows. It continued to air afternoon cartoons from Fox Kids until the fall of
2001 , when they moved to WDCA (only to be cut to Saturdays everywhere in 2002). On
October 29 ,
2001 , WDCA became WTTG's sister station when Fox bought it from
Viacom . Fox 5 continued to run top rated off-network sitcoms in the evenings. It recently added an evening 5 to 6 PM Newscast.
Today Fox 5 has over 40 hours a week of local news.
